The Future of the Internet

The Future of the Internet

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is an initiative of the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the United States and the world. The project explores the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care and civic/political life.

In 2008 it conducted its third survey into how the Internet is changing our lifes. Some 578 leading Internet activists, experts and commentators responded in this survey to scenarios about the effect of the Internet on social, political, and economic life in the year 2020. An additional 618 stakeholders also participated in the study, for a total of 1 196 participants who shared their views.

Some of the main findings from the survey include:

  • The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020;
  • The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance or forgiveness;
  • Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the Internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020;
  • Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing "arms race" with the "crackers" who will find ways to copy and share content without payment;
  • The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations;
  • Next-generation engineering of the network to improve the current Internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

To read the full report, click here.

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Comments

Internet to green technology...

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.Green tachnology does include Internet.The need for more green technology and practices is definitive, as the impact on our environment from our appetites for fossil fuel machinery and methods of generation electricity have taken a toll. An effort does have to be made to repair our planet, but many consider the loss of amenities to be too great to surmount. However, there are ways of getting by: solar water heating devices, electric high speed trains getting installed for public transport, and so forth. If you start going a little more green, it's like giving a cash advance to the Earth.

Green Technology

"The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020;"
This is evidently already fast becoming the primary connection tool. With 2020 more than 11 years away i think
that there is even more room for a twist, possibly once again to something we never thought possible similar to the introduction mobile phone.

In response to AppleP:
Green technology does also seem to be the way the world is moving. Especially the internet. Just as an example the number
of green web hosting providers on the internet seems to have absolutely sky rocketed in the past year.
whether they are doing it to follow one another are they are serious about getting green nobody knows.
It is great to great awareness being populated through the internet. The next generation will hopefully not know any better than being green.

Thanks for sharing - A very intersting read.

This extraordinary book

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.Green tachnology does include Internet.The need for more green technology and practices is definitive, as the impact on our environment from our
appetites for fossil fuel machinery and methods of generation electricity have taken a toll. An effort does have to be made to repair our planet, but many consider the loss of amenities to be too great to surmount. However, there are ways of getting by: solar water heating devices, electric high speed trains getting installed for public transport, and so forth. If you start going a little more green, it's like giving a cash advance to the Earth.